Mission

The mission of the Power Sources Technology Group is to develop, design, produce, support, and evaluate battery and other energy storage technologies for the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), other government agencies, and industry.

Facilities

Facilities include two dry rooms, numerous wet chemical laboratories, several battery test laboratories, and computer network laboratory. A 3000-square-foot dry room and a smaller dry room, where a full-ventilation hood is available, contain equipment to fabricate and assemble finished thermal batteries and lithium ambient-temperature batteries from raw materials. We also perform pretest and posttest analysis of these batteries.

We use a scanning electron microscope for research and failure analysis. We also perform thermal analysis of cells and cell components using accelerating rate calorimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, differential thermal analysis, and thermogravimetric analysis.

In research and development laboratories, we perform cutting-edge work on lithium intercalation materials, lithium cell electrolytes, rechargeable battery cathodes, and double-layer capacitors. In these laboratories we perform activities such as electrolyte distillation and purification, cathode rolling, cell-roll assembly, can welding, and filling, which support prototype fabrication of lithium ambient-temperature cells as well as post-mortem evaluations. We have several inert atmosphere glove boxes for cell assembly and disassembly.

We maintain a state-of-the-art remote testing facility for battery safety and abuse tests. We have six instrumented test bays with high speed data acquisition and storage. We have expanded our capabilities to actively monitor cells and batteries during abuse. Thermal abuse at elevated temperature, crush and penetration tests can be performed. Monitoring activities span electrical measurements, complex impedance spectroscopy, real time gas analysis, as well as photographic and audio recordings.

Our testing resources include commercial as well as Sandia-designed and built testers. We have hundreds of test channels that can be applied to virtually any testing job. Our testers can handle low range (5 volts, one amp capacity) to high range (hundreds of volts and amps) applications. The rechargeable battery test laboratory is a fully automated facility used to evaluate various stationary and electric vehicle battery technologies. We use the results of these tests to characterize the performance of prototypes and to assist in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each technology.

State of the art computer-controlled performance testing of cells and batteries are also included in our laboratories. The thermal battery functional tester, which also tests active lithium batteries and double-layer capacitors, does multichannel testing in any combination of resistance, constant current, and constant power with a load-change time step of 10 milliseconds. A differentiating strength of our evaluation capability is our ability to design testers for any battery being developed and virtually any application. A central computer system facilitates data analysis by providing summaries for reports and graphic plots of data. The second computer test area is remotely located, allowing us to perform a full range of abuse tests.

In addition to the facilities available in the Power Sources Technology Group, Sandia has numerous facilities including testing, analysis, materials processing, and complex numeric modeling and simulation. Computerized environmental testing (such as vibration, shock, or spin), and abnormal testing (such as high temperature abuse (radiant heating or fire) and crash are also performed. The scientific materials and corrosion laboratories plus other process development facilities are available to support battery development activities.